Eric Davis already knows there’ll be a jumble of emotions that’ll fill his heart Saturday afternoon, a scattershot of snapshots and memories that’ll be fighting for space when he watches the number unveiled high above Citi Field. There are no friends quite like old friends, after all, and it’s hard for Eric Davis to remember life without Darryl Strawberry.
“I’ll think of the journey,” Davis says. “I’ll think about how incredibly unlikely this all was for a kid from South Central Los Angeles to come to New York and do the things he did, with all the pressure that was on him from the moment he walked in the door.”
He laughed.
“I know it’ll make Darryl smile when he flies in here,” Davis says. “And the only thing missing from the picture will be that he can’t fly over Shea Stadium anymore. Because that’s where Darryl became Darryl. That was his stage. That was his home.”
Davis will be on the field when Strawberry’s No. 18 is officially retired before a Mets game with the Diamondbacks, and though this Mets season has been anything but dreamlike, it feels oddly appropriate that it’ll be the backdrop to Strawberry’s big day.
Because the dueling senses of hopelessness and frustration mimic perfectly what it was like in Queens on May 6, 1983, when Strawberry made his Mets debut at age 21. Strawberry had a single and two walks in the Mets’ 7-4 win over the Reds that night, a rare bright spot in a season that started 7-15 and would end 68-94 — the seventh straight year the Mets would finish either last or next to last.
“I’d tell you the moment he walked in the door he had more pressure on him than any player ever — more than Junior [Ken Griffey], more than Alex Rodriguez, more than anyone,” Davis says. “But the fact is, that had already started for him. The day the Mets picked him first in the 1980 draft, every eye was on him. It’s impossible to know what that was like.”
Davis had first met Strawberry on the sandlots of Los Angeles, first for rival teams and later joining forces together. They went to different high schools — Strawberry to Crenshaw, Davis to Fremont — and though Strawberry went to the Mets with the first-overall pick in that 1980 draft, Davis went to the Reds in the eighth round.
“People called him the new Ted Williams, and they called me the new Willie Mays,” Davis says. “It was crazy expectations. But I went lower in the draft and I went to Cincinnati. I didn’t have anything close to the expectations Darryl did. He wasn’t just the No. 1 pick, he was going to New York, which needed a savior. He was going to be the savior.”
And Davis saw the toll that sometimes took on his friend.
“I look at the recent history of sports, and maybe LeBron James had the same kind of burden, because he was No. 1 and he wound up being picked by his hometown, so right away it was as if the world were looking at his every move,” Davis says. “It was the same with Darryl. I don’t think anyone knows what it was like to walk in his shoes.”
Both Strawberry and Davis honored their reputations by making quick impressions. Strawberry was Rookie of the Year in 1983, was an essential part of the Mets’ 1986 World Series team, was runner-up for MVP in 1988 and finished third in 1990. He had 280 home runs before his 30th birthday.
Davis became the first player to make a serious run at the 40-40 club in 1987 (finishing with 37 homers and 50 steals), was a critical piece to the Reds’ 1990 championship club, won three Gold Gloves and twice was a top-10 MVP finisher.
Both men’s stories began to change in their early 30s, Davis ransacked by injuries, Strawberry through a series of off-field issues. They wound up teammates on the Dodgers in 1992 and ’93. And in an eerie coincidence, both men wound up having to fight colon cancer within a year of each other’s diagnosis in the late ’90s.
“How ironic was that?” Davis says, laughing softly. “But in an odd way, it was for the best. He felt good about his situation because I felt good about mine, and because he felt good about his recovery I felt good about mine. We went through that together.”
Mets this year. Charles Wenzelberg / New York Post
But, really, Davis and Strawberry had been intertwined going all the way back to Harvard Park, the patch at 62nd and Denker in South Central where they’d first gotten together, and where Davis first felt the enormity of Strawberry’s talent.
“He was great at everything — baseball, basketball, football,” he says. “And when he would hit baseballs …”
He pauses. You can almost hear the memory bank rewinding.
“Look, Willie Stargell hit balls out of stadiums,” he says. “Frank Howard and Reggie Jackson and Mickey Mantle, those guys were hitting transformers. But they were men. Darryl was just a high school kid, just a boy, and he was hitting balls that left Dodger Stadium. It was staggering. But I’ll tell you, it was also inspiring. Darryl showed us it was feasible to use baseball to bring you to a better place.”
Saturday, Davis will smile as his old friend drinks in one last wave of adulation from Mets fans, and he will take an extra couple of peeks at the No. 18 once it’s unveiled. It’s Darryl’s day. But Davis will revel deeply, too.
“Not bad for a couple of kids from South Central, eh?”
